As in previous years, the NFL is supporting October as Breast Cancer Awareness month. The league promotes a number of different activities. You can read more about that here.
So over the weekend, teams across the league showed their pink, and their cheerleaders are part of it all. Click here to view the pink power on NFL.com.
Vikings cheerleader Krisandra Shimpa has spirit to spare as she juggles a management job at Target, the game schedule and a home life.
By Angela Busch
Special to the Star Tribune
October 4, 2009
If you watch tonight’s football game between the Minnesota Vikings and the Green Bay Packers — and most of Minnesota and Wisconsin probably will be watching — you’ll see Krisandra Shimpa. There she is, that shorter one in the front, bouncing curly blond hair, white cowboy boots — big kicks, big smile.
She’ll run out onto the field around 7:15 or so, bursting through the banner just before Brett Favre and Adrian Peterson do — out onto a Metrodome stage that sees Shimpa and her Vikings cheerleader teammates as a sort of opening act: a side salad to the main course of tackling and touchdowns.
Maybe you’ll see her, and you’ll notice how much she smiles or how high she kicks. Maybe you’ll see the cheerleaders as a unit, a team of women from some fairytale land where the abdominals are tight, smiles are white and no one ever steps out of the kick line. The reality is a lot grittier. There are injuries and sore muscles (just ask Shimpa, who has had to sit out a few practices with a strained neck). There’s practice: three times a week for three hours at a stretch, then more drills before game time.
Even off the field, it’s pretty obvious that Shimpa is a cheerleader. She has that excited way of speaking, even when it’s not a game day, and she talks a lot about just how happy she is in general. Energy explodes out of Shimpa. Her blue eyes shine when she talks about being a Vikings cheerleader.
“I just love the game,” she says, clenching her fist as she says it, looking as though after her next dance number she might want to run on the field and try blocking for Peterson. “This is my passion.”
Pep to spare
All that pep might seem forced, but Sarah Johnson, Shimpa’s younger sister who’s also on the squad, says that’s just Krisan being Krisan.
“It’s really her,” Johnson says, watching her sister lead her small group during cheer practice at LifeTime Fitness in St. Louis Park. “She’s always been really good at that. It’s just a gift she has. … We’re sisters, but even I don’t know how she does it.”
Shimpa’s not always cheering, though.
All of the Vikings’ cheerleaders are required to have a full-time job, be a full-time student or be a full-time mother, but Shimpa’s career exceeds expectations. She has been at Target since May 2007, working as a project manager in interactive marketing. She puts in at least eight hours a day there, sometimes more, sitting in a cubicle surrounded by photos of her family and cheerleading squads past and present.
When she’s not carrying pompoms or posing for the swimsuit calendar, when she puts on her business suit and heads to work in the morning, when she returns home exhausted to her husband of five years, when her joints ache after cheerleading practice and sometimes cause her to miss a drill or two — well, then the purple-and-gold veneer starts to peel off, and Shimpa starts to look a lot like the rest of us. Like any other 31-year-old woman trying to make it in the Twin Cities and figure out her life.
Giving 110 percent
Johnson says that she and Shimpa grew to love dance while growing up in Hillsboro, N.D., where their mom, Elaine, coached the high school dance team, the “Funky Divas.”
“Kris and I and our other sister [Lisa Mae] would have 6 a.m. dance practice every morning, then we’d stay after school for basketball or volleyball practice, and then we’d get up every morning and do it again,” Johnson said.
Shimpa parlayed that love of dancing and performing into a brief career as a magician’s assistant and dancer for Princess Cruise Lines. She got sliced in half and learned to walk with “sea legs,” but Shimpa missed the Midwest and moved to Minneapolis in 2002. She began her career as a pro sports cheerleader with the Timberwolves that same year, then cheered for the Minnesota Swarm lacrosse team in 2006 before joining the Vikings in 2007.
Vikings cheer coach Tami Krause has known Shimpa since she coached the Just for Kix camps that Shimpa participated in during high school.
“She embodies everything I hope for in a leader,” Krause said. “She is someone who’s in the spotlight, but it’s never forced. The spotlight seeks her out.”
When Shimpa had to sit out for a few practices because of a neck injury, “it was very frustrating to her,” Krause said. “She doesn’t know how to do something without her utmost effort. … She had to realize that she can’t always give 110 percent.”
Living in the moment
Balancing her passion for performing with the reality of day-to-day life has been Shimpa’s biggest challenge during her three years with the Vikings. She and her husband, Michael, sometimes have a tough time carving out space for each other during the football season.
“It might sound cheesy, but we created ‘M and K’ time,” Shimpa said.
And at age 31, there’s also the question of M and K and C — as in “child” — time. Shimpa considered taking 2009 off from the Vikings’ squad to try to start a family, but ultimately decided she had another year of cheering in her.
“I’m the kind of person, when I’m in something, I’m in it,” she says. “When I move on from this and start a family, that’s where my focus will be. When I’m at my office job, that’s where my focus is.
“But right now, I’m here [cheering]. This is what I’m in at this moment, and I’m absolutely going to put everything I have into what I’m doing right now.”
The Cincinnati Bengals Cheerleaders recently unveiled their 2009-10 swimsuit calendar. The Bengals website has been updated with photos from the calendar debut party (click here), as well as the calendar photos themselves (click here). Go check em out!
Below, rookie Ben-Gal Chelsey shows off her page in the calendar
This just in:
Sweethearts for Soldiers Organization Announces Impressive 2010 Sweetheart Lineup
SAN DIEGO, CA October 1 2009 – – The California based non-profit organization, Sweethearts for Soldiers (SFS), have announced their 2010 Sweethearts. The list of 28 women from all over the world represents more than 20 major professional football and basketball teams. Among the list of women are some familiar faces; Jenni Croft from the Bachelor, Megan Clementi who is currently Miss Florida USA 2010 and Bonnie-Jill Laflin, actress and first ever female NBA scout for the LA Lakers.
The Sweethearts will volunteer their time to provide morale boosting and entertainment-type services to military personnel in all branches of the Armed Forces. The Sweethearts will further the mission of the organization by performing variety shows on tours to military bases and installations stateside and abroad, making appearances at various charity events, and producing a yearly calendar that will be a delivered to military personnel.
To be selected as a Sweetheart they must have performed with a professional major league football or basketball team and have a passion for volunteering their time to the military. “I can’t think of a better way to spend my time and I am proud to be a member of the 2010 Sweethearts for Soldiers”, says Anna Smith who is one of the new 2010 Sweethearts and cheered with teams from Seattle, Baltimore and Washington, DC.
Co-founder Tonya Helman states “The past two years have been extremely successful for the Sweethearts for Soldiers Organization. We were able to go Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar and bring some light to those serving overseas. Also by partnering with the Wounded Warrior Project in Jacksonville and Snowball Express in Phoenix for various events, we were able to combine our efforts for troop support and get the Sweethearts’ into the local community talking about our mission.” Helman has been on 14 tours and danced for three Professional football teams.
With the program growing so has the staff of the SFS organization. Donald Wells, former Director of the Washington Redskins Cheerleaders is taking the helm as Director of Marketing and Sponsorships. Mr. Wells has been on a record setting 27 Department of Defense tours and has a true passion for the military. With his 16+ years of pro entertainment experience he plans to help take the Sweethearts to a level that they can reach hundreds of thousands every year. This year Mr. Wells worked with designer Deb Erickson of The Line Up to develop an official uniform for the Sweethearts. Each uniform will showcase the Sweethearts for Soldiers logo and is covered in hand placed crystals.
(politely butting in)
Sweetheart Jenny shows off the new threads with a couple of Marines who I’m sure were dragged, kicking and screaming, into service for this photo. Semper Fi!
(~sasha)
About the Sweethearts for Soldiers Organization
Sweethearts for Soldiers is a private, nonprofit organization whose mission is to support the troops by providing morale boosting and entertainment-type services to our men and women in uniform. Sweethearts for Soldiers is not a government agency and relies on the generosity of the American people. For more information on Sweethearts for Soldiers or to donate please go to www.sweetheartsforsoldiers.org or contact:
Donald Wells – Marketing Division
Donald@sweetheartsforsoldiers.org
(240) 876-3014
New stuff on SportsIllustrated.com!
Bios and profiles are now online. Go here to read up on the ladies.
Lots of new stuff has been posted from the last two weekends. The collections feature dance teams from just about every team in the league. Click here for week 2, and here for week 3.
Many dance teams in the NBA and NFL perform in holiday-themed costumes for Halloween and Christmas “the winter holidays.” Some teams put everyone in the same costume. Some pick a theme i.e. witches or fairies and each dancer picks a costume that’s a variation on that theme.
Other teams arrange it so everyone wears something different.
In any case, every year, after the holidays, I receive a few emails asking where Team X or Team Y got their holiday outfits, so I thought I’d be proactive and post the info ahead of time.
Santa-themed outfits are everywhere. It won’t take much looking to find something you’ll like.
When it comes to Halloween, the options are countless. There is an incredible variety of costumes out there, from witches and pirates, to superheroes and fairytale characters. Some are cute and funny and flirty, and some cross the line from costume to lingerie. (Duh – obviously the scandalous stuff is more appropriate in your own home than at the game.) You can dial the sexy up or down however you want.
In terms of cost, I’ve seen costumes start at around $25 and go up from there. Here are a few places to get started:
Amazon.com’s Halloween Store
3 Wishes
Yandy
My Diva’s Closet
Flirt Catalog
Spook Shop
Leg Avenue
I’ve also discovered an unexpected array of footwear to go with just about any costume you could imagine. Who knew you could do so much with a pair of go-go boots?
Most of the outfits I’ve seen on the court and on the field can be found on these sites. I’m not endorsing these vendors – having never purchased anything from them – but they’ve all got cute stuff. They’ve got just about every holiday covered, including Christmas, of course, but also Independence Day, Valentine’s Day, Saint Patty’s, and even Thanksgiving, so if you have a theme-based performance coming up for any of these holidays, you might want to take a look at those costumes too.
Hope this helps. Let me know what you come up with!
After a month and a half delay, the Miami Dolphins have finally launched their new-look website. At the same time, they unveiled the brand new Dolphins Cheerleaders website. Click here to go to MiamiDolphinsCheerleaders.net now.
Individual full-length photos of the Charger Girls can’t be found on Chargers.com, but they CAN be found on Flickr. Go there now.
